Right, but if they are the same hand as some experts have opined, that of course rules out Jackson.

Hasn't the hobby deteriorated enough that the authentication on this one will be golden until the end of time? Seems there is always at least two buyers whose desire to own things far exceeds the desire to be certain the item is genuine.

Yeah that's the power of third party authentication. It at least shifts the burden of proof back to the party claiming inauthentic.

Great call, never saw the Mrs. signature from that early in his career. Agreed with wife signature.

Being written by the same person would certainly rule out ol Joe. What handwriting expert has made this claim?

Ron Keurajian, the author of two volumes of “Baseball Hall of Fame Autographs: A Reference Guide” that also include signature analyses of players from the 1919 Chicago White Sox, said that there are “no genuine signed images of Jackson in existence.”

In its auction listing, Christie’s said the Jackson autograph is “the lone surviving example of any type.”

Keurajian said he was skeptical about the photograph’s authenticity.

“Here’s a guy who was illiterate, but he can write ‘Alexandria’ on the photograph?” Keurajian told Cox Media Group via telephone on Thursday night. “And for those who believe Frank Smith wrote ‘Alexandria’ on the photo, so, he wrote it in the same hand as Jackson’s? That seems highly unlikely.”

And from Thomas Saunders here, who obviously knows a great deal.


5. It seems very likely that the same hand wrote everything on that photo and Jackson 100% could not have done that.

If they were done by the same hand, my best guess would be Joe's wife. She could've replicated Joe's signature, and the "n" in "Alexandria" looks a lot like the "n" on the 1919 contract she signed for Joe. Not to mention, the odd "e" seen in both Joe's authentic and wife-reproduced sigs, and "Alexandria."

What is the reasoning arguing that they are in the same hand? Any idea? Signed at the same time is believable, but to my untrained eye the signature and the Alexandria line look totally different. I would also add that there appears to have been a lot more pressure (and therefore ink) applied in the Jackson auto than in the location and date - yet another thing that could be explained both ways, but a difference nonetheless.

One way to get at this would be to look through the albums for Frank Smith's writing --- perhaps when the balance of the Cleveland album makes it to Rhys we will be fortunate to see some of Smith's writing it in.

The Jacksons were married in 1908 so Mrs. Jackson may have been present, but there are a lot of differences between the wife-signed doc and Alexandria (the e and the a's really jump out).

Hopefully Thomas can answer this at least for himself. I really am not sure.

Somewhere I read her k's always looked like capital K, though. I also thought she did NOT have the odd e. Hard to keep it all straight.

The signature is clearly either Joe's or someone (perhaps his wife) trying to make it look like Joe's, so most letters will be unnatural scrawls. On all of the authentic sigs, the final "n" is just a trailing line. But on some wife signed ones, it looks more like a wave, similar to the "n" in "Alexandria."

Since Joe apparently only began drawing his name after he met his wife, and since she signed things for him, it seems clear that the image Joe used to copy from was created by his wife. In other words, Joe's authentic signatures would be his best attempt to copy what his wife had written for him to memorize.

So, where we see differences between Joe's genuine signature and wife-signed things, the differences would be his wife's natural handwriting coming through. The wavy final "n" being the most prominent example.

I would suggest reading the thread about this same topic from 2015 for those who have not as some of this is explained there by folks better at it and more experienced than I

The case for its all written by the same hand - Written at same time with same instrument I believe was a big part of it.
T
Someone asked about other Jackson signatures from 1911 on documents...as for as I know there arent any, but Mike Nola is who needs to be asked that he probably knows. (there are some alleged on baseballs and they all look like the small scratchy shaky signatures that are on every thing else he signed)

This 1911 photo if signed by Jackson would mean that he basically just learned to write and wrote better at the beginning (presuming he learned after being married to Katie who taught him) than he would just 4 years later

Some are double posts but here are some signatures 1915-1921 and a 1945 drivers license

IDK the more I look the more I might think it might not be the same hand...but I know two very well respected autograph experts who are of the opinion it is so thats what Ive really went off of bc they would know better than I. Some of it looks the same to me but that could be happenstance I guess

Here's the 1911 photo cropped and turned

Wife's signature. Capital looking K, regular looking e.

https://robertedwardauctions.com/auc...gned-his-wife/

Thanks for the info - I am enjoying this thread.

I agree same pen and same date, but "Here, please sign this" and then Smith immediately adding the date and location using the pen in his hand that Jackson just returned seems perfectly plausible to me. And, to me, there is nothing the same about the signature and the rest of the writing. But - I am not a handwriting expert.

I did read the old thread (https://net54baseball.com/showthread.php?t=201313). There it says that HA noted the inscription as being in the photographer's hand, so maybe my hope for some of Smith's writing in the album Rhys now owns will come to pass.

There are also people in that old thread that questioned the Matty signature, but as I pointed out in post 135 in the current thread, after seeing the 1911 newspaper premium, logic dictates that the Matty is almost certainly legit.

I still see a ton of variation in all of the known to be legit signatures, and the 1914 and 1916 PSA examples (https://www.psacard.com/autographfac...oe-jackson/21/) on documents look somewhat fluid. His later signatures get much worse, but that happens to tons of people as they age, and I would guess more so if they write very little.

I'm not sure that Joe would have signed it in front of the photographer. He was worried that his teammates would discover his illiteracy. I can't see him standing in front of a photographer while his wife sets out a sample signature that he practices copying until he feels comfortable enough to try it on the photo. Maybe Joe signed it in pencil and the photographer went over it in ink to "clean it up," then added the other stuff. The first "o" does appear to be scratchy.

Or more likely he didnt sign it at all

JoBo - "There are also people in that old thread that questioned the Matty signature, but as I pointed out in post 135 in the current thread, after seeing the 1911 newspaper premium, logic dictates that the Matty is almost certainly legit"....

Unless they (including Matty) were all signed and designed to be Facsimile signatures and thus signed by someone else (which was not unheard of). Newspaper premiums would be exactly something a facsimile signature would be used for.

I think you guys are giving way too much weight to the fact that he was illiterate. How difficult could it possibly be for an illiterate person to learn how to write their name? It's not like he needs to learn how to read and write. He just needs to learn his name. I'm not buying this idea that he was borderline incapable of signing it. I also don't buy the idea that he never signed baseballs for anyone either. I bet several of the balls in circulation were signed by him but just never get authenticated because it can't be proven.

I cannot read, write, or understand the Chinese or Japanese languages, but I guarantee I could learn how to write my name in both Kanji and Hanzi in about 5 minutes, and everyone in this thread probably could as well.

Joe couldn't write in Chinese or Greek or Russian or Arabic. Teaching someone how to write is different than teaching you to write in a different alphabet. I think you are not giving enough consideration to Joe's lack of education. In particular the JAC of Jackson is too well formed to be in the hand of someone who couldn't write and it isn't similar to other early signatures.

At this point, the bottom line for me is, if you're going to authenticate a Joe Jackson autograph which you know is going to be worth an awful lot of money, you better be damn sure. I don't see how Steve Grad could have been damn sure. At best he could have thought it more likely than not authentic, and that doesn't seem good enough to put that permanent blessing on it.

I doubt as much time or thought went into his decision and consideration as was done here and on BO. It was another feather in the cap moment. It does seem to have definitely been a reach.

Snowman's whole purpose of being here is to play the contrarian. There is nothing he would not defend at this point. A guy who has 11 different post grade degrees would know EVERYTHING about someone who never went to school.

I trust the people on here much more than I ever would Steve "Dollar Signs " Grad .
He has made his share of mistakes on high dollar items before. He was much better when he was starting out IMO.

If this is his wife's version of his signature, I would have a difficult time buying the "his wife signed that photo" argument. The differences are pretty drastic.

When you zoom in, you can still see those letters are clearly labored. Was it because the hand writing it was attempting to forge his signature which was known to be labored, or was it because Joe signed it himself? We can't know with certainty, but I think it's reasonable to begin looking at all of the circumstantial evidence (the full portfolio and all of the other signatures and inscriptions that came with it) to increase or decrease the likelihood of its authenticity. In the video someone linked to earlier where Gold explains his process, this is what he did and it appears as though the braoder portfolio combined with the labored handwriting is what convinced him.

I also think the argument above about him having more room to sign on a large photo, as opposed to having to fit his signature into a tiny space on a driver's license, could account for a few letters being slightly cleaner than they are in other known examples of his signature where the spacing was limited.


I think this is the most reasonable position to take. I'm glad to see we don't always disagree :)


You should check out the video linked to earlier in this thread. Gold walks the viewer through his thought process, albeit briefly.


I apologize if my point about most people here being capable of learning how to write their names in Kanji in 5 minutes, despite being illiterate in Japanese, didn't land with you. Perhaps I should have said "some" people here could do this rather than "most". I hope I didn't offend you. I will be better next time.

Without commenting on the authenticity of the autograph, it should be noted that the "more likely than not" is the threshold accepted for experts in trial. It can be dolled up in more flowery language like "within a reasonable degree of certainty," but it all boils down to "at least 51% sure." Now, that can certainly be higher than that (as I personally like to be 100% convinced that I am correct before testifying to an opinion), but the "at least" 51% is the magic threshold. So, I suspect that if autograph experts were to be pressed in litigation, it'd boil down to the same degree of certainty. After all, it is only their opinion. It is up to the marketplace (or a jury) to determine if that opinion carries any weight.

To me that's apples to oranges. I don't think 51 percent cuts it for authenticating a million dollar item. I'd prefer an authenticator apply a reasonable doubt standard. I very much doubt any collector would be satisfied with a 51 percent standard.

The "e" in Alexandria is weird like the "e" in Jackson, no? Like a backwards 3/capital E.

I just read the other thread in its entirety. I must have missed the part where anyone at all, let alone an expert or even an "expert", chimed in with any arguments whatsoever that explained in detail why this couldn't possibly be his signature or why they believe the signature and inscription were written in the same hand.

All I encountered were dozens of people saying things like, "no way, can't be his, it's too big", or "FOUND IN A BARN lololol", or "ya, "found in a barn" bahaha", or "Joe couldn't possibly have written that, look how clean the Alexandria text is", or "Joe was illiterate! He couldn't have signed it", and a few other gems.

On Blowout there is a link to Peter Nssh's lengthy archived post on this. I can't post it here because of the rules though.

You are saying this from the perspective of a literate person. You writing anything at all in any language as a literate person cannot be compared to an illiterate person doing anything.

Here's how you can test your theory. Sit down with a 3 year old and show them how to write Kanji. See if it takes 5 minutes. Report back on how it looks.

I see this process daily. I have a 3-year-old. She is currently learning how to write. I assure you, with 3 years of practice, she'll have no problem writing her name. But you shouldn't conflate the illiteracy of a fully grown adult with the illiteracy of a 3-year-old child. They do not face the same obstacles. An adult could learn how to write their name much faster than a toddler could (...grabbing my shield now, as the arrows telling me how ignorant I am for making such a claim come flying in...)

Where does that idea come from? An illiterate person has no understanding of the written word. There is a lesser understanding than no understanding?

I think this is a poor comparison. The fine motor movement skills of a small child versus an adult are vastly different regardless of literacy.

Are they? We're talking about someone who would have no experience with a pencil. I've got pretty good motor skills and am literate. I don't think I'd do well at caligraphy. All you have to do is try writing with your weak hand. I think you'll find out pretty quickly how handy muscle memory and practice are.

Just because someone is incapable of writing doesn't mean they haven't had experience holding a pencil in order to draw things. Children do learn to use writing implements prior to learning how to read or print their names. And again, Jackson was an adult, so would have had ample opportunity to find other uses for a pen or pencil.

Like what? Are you suggesting he might have been an artist or something?

Not at all. Just think of various utilitarian ways a pen or pencil can be used other than to write in a language. An illiterate adult would have had many reasons to make marks throughout their life--the point being that the motor movements would have been much more developed in a fully grown individual as a result. Remember, even if the writing implement wasn't held in the 100% proper way, a person is likely using the very same muscles and motor movements whether writing, drawing or making a mark on a 2X4. A pre-schooler's pen, pencil or paintbrush marks are generally fraught with more trepidation. While Jackson's autograph does exhibit slowness and hesitancy, try getting your three year old to write "Joe Jackson" anywhere near as nice. If your child is gifted, they'd likely be more literate than poor Joe, too, but they still couldn't do as good a job. Case closed.

Some of you guys make it sound like he was practically a vegetable, or that he was the equivalent of a recent amputee learning to write with their toes for the first time. We're talking about a fully capable adult here, with finely tuned motor skills, learning to copy a few letters. That's it. It's really not that difficult. We're not talking about him learning to read and write, we're not talking about him being able to generate a beautifully scripted signature like Babe Ruth's or anything like that. We're simply talking about someone learning how to copy a few letters.

I think it's evident from his signature throughout his life that it never got that easy.

Kids are not a good example to compare to adults on this one - the bones in their hands/wrists and their brains are not fully formed.

Jackson wrote numbers and kept notebooks:

https://www.rrauction.com/auctions/l...ok-page/?cat=0

https://www.gottahaverockandroll.com...-LOT38717.aspx

So he clearly had the ability to hold a pen. I also imagine he drew pictures or made doodles at some point in his life, even if only as a kid.

This is all getting away from the point of this thread. And I still say that this makes a lot more sense as a legit signature than it does as a fake given the provenance, the other photos, and the period published newspaper piece that has hand-signed photos in it, not facsimile signatures.

The penmanship in that notebook which includes many words as well as numbers looks pretty damn good. I don't know what to make of it.

Notice that the bottom one had no bids and didn't sell, and that was less than two months before the photo sold for $1.4 million. The top one sold for $763 in August of last year. I'm guessing that despite the Beckett COA, there was serious doubt about the authenticity. If he could actually write all those things, that would change the entire discussion about his ability to sign his name.

But the one thing I'd like to know is, if the new owner of the photo decides to do an analysis that shows the ink has been on the photo since 1911, if Joe didn't sign it, who did? It looks nothing like the way his wife signed his name, and if the photographer or someone else signed it what exemplar did they use?

Smith could have obtained an exemplar not too much later (I haven't entirely followed the story of the 1912 but isn't there one from the Cleveland Dealer) and added it to the photo for completeness. The dating wouldn't be precise to 1911 I can't imagine.

I’d bet my whole collection the writing in the notebook isn’t his. I’m also in the “no chance” camp on the 1911 photo and tend to think all the autographs on all the photos in the “barn find” are fakes.

But the beauty of our Hobby is that other folks out there absolutely prize what I deem worthless and probably vice versa.

Jason Schwartz

Take a look at the signatures of Marquard, Crandall, and Latham on your 1911 newspaper premium — they are each different, in terms of placement and style, from the photographs at auction.

It would appear that this would be an example of the use of facsimile signatures at least on the premium, as Tom suggested above. Either that, or Marquard, Crandall and Latham signed multiple copies of the same photo in different places. This muddies the waters for me.

…and, for whatever it’s worth, they both look very similar to the facsimile on Rube’s T205 card.

It's often difficult for people to think outside of widely accepted narratives. The saying "perception is reality" holds true throughout so many different aspects of life. The illiteracy narrative of Joe Jackson could very well be one such narrative that, at its core, is almost universally misunderstood. That's not to say I'm suggesting he could read and write just fine, but rather that it's very plausible that he could have been illiterate but knew how to write letters and numbers, knew how to do simple arithmetic, and at some point, learned how to spell common names (as in his purported notebook) all while still being technically illiterate as he could not read or write a book. I don't know the history and provenance of the illiteracy story or the extent of the abilities/inabilities he is attributed to have had. But I am someone who regularly views these sorts of narratives through a very different lens than most people. I view them probabilistically and am nearly incapable of accepting them whole cloth. In fact, I see the entire world this way. I see nearly everything probabilistically. Perhaps it's because I am mildly autistic or perhaps it's just because I'm a mathematician at heart, I don't know. But I do know that in general, I often discount what others accept at fact. That's not to say that I don't believe he was illiterate. I'm sure there are very good reasons to believe this. But I discount the probabilities of the various assumptions that can be made based on that fact. Someone above said something to the tune of "that notebook couldn't possibly be his handwriting because Jackson was illiterate". That's an example of a conclusion that someone like me is incapable of making. I think that once a narrative gets formed and begins to perpetuate, particularly one that is 100+ years old, it can become nearly impossible to correct it.

This thread reminds me of the Luka Doncic signature drama. I can't tell you how many times I've encountered the narrative that "his mom signs his cards for him" because there are clear differences in some of his signatures. Some of his autos clearly say "Lulu" in swooping cursive letters that, admittedly, do appear to have a bit of a feminine looking flow to them, while other signatures of his look much more choppy and masculine. The theory is that he signs the masculine ones and had his mom (or some say girlfriend) sign the loopy ones. This is a widespread belief in the modern side of the hobby. You can find YouTube videos and dedicated threads to it on other forums. For many, it's a simple fact: "Luka's mom signs his cards". However, there are mutliple examples of people getting things signed by Luka in person, live on video, where he signs with the exact loopy, feminine-looking version of his signature, yet somehow, this narrative is still extremely difficult to combat. Imagine if we didn't have modern technology and we weren't able to witness him signing both forms of his signature right there before our very eyes. Imagine he was a player from the 1910s and all we had were two versions of his signatures to look at and the tales that got passed down from one generation to the next. I have no doubt that the accepted modern view would be that his mom signed the loopy ones and that only the choppy ones are authentic. Yet, this wouldn't be true. It often takes someone who discounts narratives at face value to see through the fog. That doesn't mean we should completely disregard narratives, but rather that it's beneficial to say, "perhaps that is what happened", or even "most likely, that is what happened", or "I'm sure some version of that is true". But it is a heavy handicap to discovering truth if one approaches these sorts of stories with the viewpoint of "we know X, therefore Y". If you don't question the axioms upon which X stands, then you will often be misled.

[...here come the arrows twisting my words into something ridiculous like me proposing that Jackson wasn't actually illiterate. Again, that's not what I'm saying, so if that's how this post comes across to you, please read it again before putting words in my mouth that I'm just going to have to spit back out...]